Tag Archives: action

Goals, Habits, Life, Mindset

1 Year Later

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It’s been over a year now since I started on my entrepreneurial journey, and boy have I learned a lot. I’ve made a ton of mistakes, learned from them, and gotten just a tad wiser. At least, I think. I’ll continue to make mistakes, of course, and that’s par for the course. So many unbelievable opportunities have opened up because I finally had the courage to start believing in myself. But man, was I ever nervous as hell. To an extent, I still am from time to time, and I don’t think that will ever go away. But I sure am glad I took that first step over 1 year ago. I’ll never look back.

 

My life is so much different now. Faster, better, happier, more resilient, more courageous, more patient. I’m a lucky dude. Great friends, great family. That decision to move back to where I grew up was one of the toughest decisions I ever made. I sacrificed a lot, left a lot behind, and made some tough and unpopular decisions. And now I’m better for it. Looking back over a year later, it seems like a no brainer. Why the hell did it take so long?

 

My $80,000 tuition bill is paid. I’m debt free now. Feels good, feels real good. My Spanish has improved tremendously. In fact, I am almost done the entire Spanish course on Duolingo. I sure am glad I started learning Spanish over 1 year ago (probably closer to 1.5 years actually).

 

And my strength? I started barbell training late July of last year. I had no clear goals in mind. I wanted to be stronger, not superhuman level but not pathetic either. Now I’m squating over 300 lbs and deadlifting 2.5 times my bodyweight. And I remember at first I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend all of that money buying a power rack and barbells and weights last summer. Idiot, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

 

Am I where I want to be with my entrepreneurial pursuits? No. Am I where I want to be with my language learning? No. Am I as strong as I want to be? No. But fuck, I am leaps and bounds ahead of where I was 1 year ago.

 

My point is in this moment we all have our doubts, and they never go away. Those doubts are there for your protection, but often times they do more harm then good. If I listened to them, I’d probably be stuck in a dead end job working for the man paying off my debt for eternity and living in slow and silent misery. But every time I felt that doubt I simply decided to act inspite of it and in spite of my reservations. I watch this awesome girl do her thing and I’m convinced that that’s how it goes down

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daC2EPUh22w

 

You see, at first, you look like a moron. You just do. And you probably feel silly, too. But sooner or later, things start to click. Sometimes it takes forever. Spanish, for example, is not something I pick up quickly. It could be my material or my methods, or it could just be I am not really gifted in linguistics (or a combination). But strength has accelerated beyond my wildest expectations. I wasn’t particularly good at rock climbing, but first person shooter games like Quake 3 I excelled at very quickly. Some things you’re just going to be naturally gifted at, and other things not so much. But what matters the most is consistent, deliberate effort.

 

This summer I started running. For years I’ve told my friends how much I hated running. I thought it was deathly boring and repetitive and I never got into the zone while running and I never felt a runners high. Well I’ve been at it for 4 months now and I still find it boring and repetitive and I still haven’t gotten into the zone or felt a runner’s high. But I can feel it starting to make sense. It might not come anytime soon, but if I keep at it, it will. It’s an inevitability.

 

After a long hiatus, I am back training jiu jitsu again. My timing is coming back quickly and the muscle memory is there. And I’m a whole heck of a lot stronger now. I’ll give it a year of consistent and deliberate practice, and have another look back. I bet I’m going to be better.

 

So what’s that thing you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t gotten around to it? Start today, because 1 year from now you’re going to be +9000 at it. Go ahead, give yourself permission.

Life, Me

Why you need to take action.

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Nike said it best with their “just do it” slogan. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will happen if you sit around waiting for it to happen. If you have a fork in the road and some tough decisions, make one. Go with your gut, and consequences be damned. Don’t sit there and try and analyze every possible outcome of every possible decision because you will fall into analysis paralysis. If you come from the right place, the decision will work itself out in the end. If it was a bad decision, learn from it.

The key is action. Nothing matters if you don’t do anything. Your goals and resolutions mean squat if you don’t do anything about them. My friend told me his resolution was to lose more weight this year, and then he followed up by asking me if I wanted to go to the Mandarin for some buffet goodness. No, I’m not kidding you. How do you think his resolution is going to hold up? Its hilarious but sad at the same time. I don’t mind talkers as long as they can back it up. But talkers who don’t do any action I filter through my ignore function.

Go to the gym + eat healthy + sleep right = healthier mind, body, soul
People know this, but they lack the motivation to do so. No action.
Smoking = bad
People know this, but they lack the motivation to do so. No action.

We are people of action. We do things so things get done. Got it? If whatever you decide to do explodes in your face, so be it. I once heard somebody say that everything always works itself out in the end, and if hasn’t worked itself out yet, then its not the end. I like that. Do it. DO IT!

The nerd in me has been busy lately. I have been haxoring all sorts of things on my computer to make it a super elite machine of glory. I can access it anywhere in the world, even when its turned off. Cool, right? When would I ever use it? I don’t know, I’m sure it will come in handy some day 😉 But I did it and it was fun. Its still not working quite fully yet, and it might not but I’ll keep trying until I’m out of options. I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but I started. ACTION.

Same with this blog. I started way back in the day when people didn’t even know what a blog was. It was just some buzzword that nerds threw around back in the day and now look at what the internet is turning into. Social sites are huge. Google is huge. Blogs are huge. And now, what can you do? You can connect them. And that’s what I did today, out of curiosity to see how it would work. Did I know what I was doing? Heck no. Did I analyze every little contigency? Nope. I just started, and now it works. At least, I think it does. You can login with your GMAIL accounts now and do stuff on my site like put up wall posts. How cool is that? Can somebody test it for me, please? Also, you can login with your FACEBOOK accounts now and post comments and the like. Tell me that isn’t friggin awesomeness deluxe. Can somebody try with that for me, please? You may ask why this is even important? Well, think about the traffic you can drive to your website when you have GOOGLE and FACEBOOK helping you out. Sites looking to make money and be more social and more cool and easier for users should certainly take advantage of this. Me? I don’t care to make money off of this blog. I’m just trying it out, and learning something new 🙂 Action, take it. Its your friend.

Life, Me

Fall Hard in order to Fly…

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I hope you all had a great 2008. 2009 looks like it will be a difficult year, according to economists, but with tough times comes GLORIOUS opportunities. To steal a direct quote from Tim Ferriss’ blog:

To bring in a wonderful 2009, I’d like to quote from an email I received today from a mentor of more than a decade:

While many are wringing their hands, I recall the 1970s when we were suffering from an oil shock causing long lines at gas stations, rationing, and 55 MPH speed limits on Federal highways, a recession, very little venture capital ($50 million per year into VC firms), and, what President Jimmy Carter (wearing a sweater while addressing the Nation on TV because he had turned down the heat in the White House) called a “malaise”. It was during those times that two kids without any real college education, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, started companies that did pretty well. Opportunities abound in bad times as well as good times. In fact, the opportunities are often greater when the conventional wisdom is that everything is going into the toilet.

Well…we’re nearing the end of another great year, and, despite what we read about the outlook for 2009, we can look forward to a New Year filled with opportunities as well as stimulating challenges.

That’s right, keep an open mind and aim high, and look out for the opportunities to present themselves. But you have to know that you will, at one time or another, fall. You will fail and it will suck and there will be self doubt, but you have to keep going. You have to muster up the courage to try again. Last month I was catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in about a year. She mentioned to me that she doesn’t know what it feels like to fail, because she has always succeeded at everything she has done. Oh, poor soul, I thought. Wait, just wait, it will come. The older you get going through life without failing, the more it will hurt when it happens and the less you’ll know on how to deal with it. And it will happen. Take your licks now, because that is how you grow. Or you can shrivel away, and avoid life, and become a peon. Its up to you.

Last year I started something in late spring I called Project Social. What an epic failure. I started out as a nightclub promoter and lasted all of three nights. Yes, three! It wasn’t because I wasn’t good at it, it just felt like work. Going up to pretty girls making sure they are having a good time and getting free drinks all night sounds like a lot of fun, but it wasn’t jiving with me. I felt pressure to succeed and the whole point of Project Social was to have more fun. So I stopped. There’s nothing wrong with calling it quits when something isn’t serving you and your life ambition. Plus the promoter I was working for was not somebody I would conduct business with again, but we’ll leave it at that.

The City Bee is live now, and to be honest I have no idea how its going to do. It could be a fiery ball of doom for all I know, but I had to try. Obstacles came up, lots of them, but I barrelled through them with the help of my talented partners. Some things didn’t turn out exactly as planned, but I made workarounds and compromised with my partners. The website itself is not something I am entirely interested in at this point in my life, but I bet it has the potential to bring tremendous value to many people out there. But who knows, maybe it was all a big mistake. And I am ok with that. The journey to create it has been incredible. I built a website from the ground up. It was a conversation with a dear friend over dinner and drinks and turned into something real in a matter of 3 months. How cool is that? There are still things I’m learning about what I need to do. I had to take a few steps back in order to make a few steps forward. My partners don’t really have any idea the type of work I had to put into it to make it the way it is, and I’m ok with that. I’m not doing it for glory, I’m doing it to learn. And learn I have. From that knowledge, I’ve got something special coming down the pipe. Super excited but for now I have to remain hush on it. Time is my biggest enemy here. Juggling priorities is my most difficult issue at the moment. Right now I have a big fat issue I have been neglecting for far too long; the GMAT. Its now or never so I am going full deluxe overdrive mode for the next little while. Who knows, maybe it will be a miserable failure. That’s cool, bring it on.

“It was great just watching you, every day was like a privilige. Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!” – Rocky Balboa